Slay the Spire 2 Ancients Guide: Every Blessing Ranked
Complete guide to all 8 Ancients in Slay the Spire 2. Learn which blessings to pick for each character and how the Ancient system replaces boss relics.
Boss Relics Are Gone
If you played the first Slay the Spire, you remember the choice after every boss: pick one of three boss relics. That system is dead. Slay the Spire 2 replaces it with Ancients, and the difference is bigger than it sounds.
After you kill a boss, you don’t get a relic. Instead, you meet an Ancient — a powerful NPC who offers you a blessing. You pick one of three randomly offered blessings, it gets applied to your run as a permanent effect, and you move on. No item in your relic bar. No carried object. Just a lasting change to how your run works.
Here’s the critical difference from boss relics: you must pick one. There’s no skip button. Every boss kill locks you into a blessing whether you love the options or not. This makes the Ancient encounters feel heavier than the old system. Bad luck here actually hurts.
How Ancients Work
Eight Ancients exist in the game. After each boss, you encounter one of them at random. They offer 3 blessings from their personal pool. Most Ancients have 10 blessings in their pool. Two exceptions: Neow has 20, and Darv has 12.
Because you only see 3 out of 10+ options, you can’t plan around specific blessings. You plan around what the Ancient tends to offer. Some Ancients lean offensive. Some lean defensive. Some are wildcards.
Blessings are applied effects, not inventory items. You won’t see them in your relic screen. They’re more like permanent buffs stitched into your run. This matters because nothing interacts with them the way cards interact with relics. They’re their own system entirely.
The 8 Ancients, Ranked
I’m ranking these based on floor quality — how often their blessing pool offers something genuinely useful regardless of your character or deck state. The best Ancients have deep pools where most options feel good. The worst have pools where 2 out of 3 offerings might be dead weight.
S Tier
Neow — The whale from the original game returns, and she’s the best Ancient in the sequel. Her pool has 20 blessings, which means the widest variety. More variety means a higher chance that at least one of your three options fits your deck. Her blessings range from max HP boosts to card transforms to free relics. You’ll rarely feel stuck with Neow.
Orobas — Leans heavily into offensive scaling. His blessings frequently offer Strength, damage bonuses, or effects that trigger on killing enemies. If your deck already has a damage engine running, Orobas pushes you into overdrive. Even his weaker offerings tend to do something relevant.
A Tier
Pael — Defensive specialist. Blessings focus on Block, damage reduction, and sustain. Pael is your best friend when you’re heading into a brutal act with low HP. Not flashy, but consistently useful. Ironclad and Defect particularly benefit since they both have builds that appreciate extra survivability.
Tezcatara — Focuses on card manipulation. Blessings that affect draw, hand size, and card costs. If you’re running a deck that cares about playing lots of cards per turn — Shiv Silent, Orb Defect, Star Regent — Tezcatara’s blessings accelerate your engine. Less useful for slow, top-heavy decks.
B Tier
Vakuu — Economy and utility blessings. Extra gold, shop discounts, potion upgrades. Vakuu’s offerings are never bad, but they’re also never the thing that wins you a run. You’ll pick the best of three, shrug, and move on. Floor is high, ceiling is low.
Darv — Has 12 blessings instead of 10, which gives slightly more variety. His pool is eclectic, mixing offensive, defensive, and weird utility effects. The problem is inconsistency. Darv can offer you three completely unrelated blessings where none of them support what you’re doing. He’s a gamble.
C Tier
Nonupeipe — Specializes in conditional blessings. Effects that trigger under specific circumstances, like when you exhaust a card or when an enemy attacks multiple times. When these conditions align with your deck, the blessings are strong. When they don’t, you’re picking the least useless option out of three bad ones.
Tanx — The riskiest Ancient. Some blessings come with drawbacks, similar to old boss relics like Coffee Dripper or Ectoplasm. The upside on Tanx’s offerings can be massive, but you might get three options that all hurt your run in different ways. I’ve had Tanx encounters where every choice felt like a punishment.
Character-Specific Advice
Ironclad — Loves Orobas (Strength scaling synergy), Pael (patching his main weakness of inconsistent Block), and Neow (wide pool always finds something). Avoid Nonupeipe unless you’re running an Exhaust build.
Silent — Tezcatara is her best Ancient. Card manipulation feeds directly into Shiv, Discard, and Poison builds. Orobas works too since more damage always helps poison stacks close out fights.
Defect — Pael keeps him alive long enough for orbs to scale. Tezcatara helps with the draw he desperately needs. Vakuu’s economy blessings fund the shop visits where Defect finds his best uncommons.
Regent — Tezcatara for Star/Energy synergy, Orobas for raw scaling. Regent already has defensive tools in her kit, so Pael is less critical here than on other characters.
Necrobinder — Neow’s wide pool is safest. Orobas helps close kills before Doom stacks matter. Nonupeipe can actually work here since exhaust triggers happen naturally in her kit.
What to Do When All Three Options Are Bad
It happens. You beat a boss, meet an Ancient, and hate every offering. No skip button. You’re picking one.
Default to the most generic option. A small max HP boost beats a conditional trigger you’ll never proc. A modest Block bonus beats an offensive blessing when your deck has no damage engine. When in doubt, pick the blessing with the fewest conditions attached to it.
Don’t tilt over a bad Ancient encounter. One mediocre blessing won’t ruin a good run. Two mediocre blessings won’t ruin a great run. The system adds variance, not determinism. Your deck and relic choices still matter more than any single blessing.
Blessing Stacking
Something the game doesn’t explain well: blessings from different Ancients can compound. If Pael gave you bonus Block at the start of combat and later Tezcatara gives you extra draw on turn 1, you’re suddenly opening every fight with a massive defensive setup and more cards to work with.
Think about your existing blessings when picking new ones. Late in a run, the blessing that complements what you already have beats the blessing that’s individually stronger but redundant.